BLACK SABBATH’s Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler are featured in a new interview with Matt Munday at The Independent. An excerpt from the story is available below:

Iommi, as his iron handshake testifies, is in robust health again. I do not raise the subject of his treatment for lymphoma directly with him, for fear of appearing glib, and he accepts my compliment that he is looking well without further comment. However, speaking on the phone the following day, Butler raises the subject and says that “we all thought he was on his way out at one point. He’d lost tons of weight and his hair was gone. I think the album took his mind off all the radiation and chemo. And then, as we were recording, he seemed to bloom.”

Butler believes that Iommi was the main difference between this album and Sabbath’s last (aborted) attempt in 2001, which yielded only six songs that were “just not good enough.”

“I didn’t think we’d ever do an album together after that,” Butler says. “Which is why we took so long. But this time Tony had got his own studio at home, and he had all these incredible riffs. The hardest part is to take an average riff and form it into a song. As soon as we heard these riffs, we knew Tony was back on form. We knew straight away it was going to work.”

Will 13 be their last album? It ends with the sound of thunder and a tolling bell, which is how their very first LP began, though this was Rick Rubin’s idea. “We’re very pleased with the album,” Iommi equivocates. “Though if it does turn out to be our last, then it’s a great way to go.”

Black Sabbath Live… Gathered In Their Masses has entered the Top Music Videos chart in the US at #2, selling approximately 9,000 copies in it’s first week of release. In Canada, the title lands at #4 on the SoundScan DVD chart.

Black Sabbath’s triumphant 2013 tour – which kicked off earlier this year in Australia – can now be seen by fans around the world via Black Sabbath: Live… Gathered In Their Masses (Vertigo/Republic).

Source: Bravewords.comBLACK SABBATH guitar legend Tony Iommi is featured in a new interview conducted by Glenn BurnSilver for the Phoenix New Times. An excerpt from the discussion is available below:

Q: How is playing together–recording together–after so many years of tension and not being in the studio? The last album with the original lineup was in 1978… Ozzy was booted out in 1979…

Iommi: “Tensions? The tensions over the years have mainly been about business. It’s not been personal at all. We always got on well on a personal level. It’s been going really good.

It’s just a different attitude now. When we got back together to record this album everybody had a different attitude toward what we were doing this time. We wanted to make an album together. We all really appreciated each other and respected each other. That’s really the only way to go into it–a full band commitment–and everybody was ready to put everything into it.

We did try back 12 years ago, and nobody could settle on it then. It wasn’t the right time, there were to many things going on. Ozzy was doing MTV, so it just didn’t work then. We weren’t going to do it until everybody was fully committed, and that was this time. Rubin was interested in doing the album (in 2001). We played him some tracks but that’s as far as we got with it. We pulled the plug on it. We never got into the studio. We’d just played him some tracks.”

Black Sabbath hit Toronto’s Air Canada Centre on Wednesday, August 14th in support of the band’s #1 album, 13.

Bassist Geezer Butler posted the following message: “At the Toronto gig last night, we were presented with a double gold disc award for sales of the latest album, 13. Then we were presented with official Toronto Maple Leafs jerseys, plus it was an absolutely fantastic show. Thank you Toronto, thank you Canada.”

Black Sabbath’s live itinerary can be found at this location.Geezer uploaded the following photos at his Facebook page:

Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler from BLACK SABBATH, the celebrated, multi-platinum rock band that pioneered the heavy metal genre with their dark and doom-laden sounds, fused with lyrical themes of the occult, addiction, war and nuclear apocalypse, will be immortalized in an all-original, terrifying 3D maze, Black Sabbath: 13 3D at Universal Studios Hollywood’s premier Halloween Horror Nights event, beginning September 20th

The new maze, based on the darkest lyrics from Black Sabbath’s biggest hit songs and the only attraction at the horror event to incorporate 3D video, will also include scenes inspired by the legendary band’s recently released Billboard #1 album, 13. A nightmarish landscape of doom will engulf guests as they enter Black Sabbath: 13 3D and traverse through horrifying graveyards, disturbing madhouses and bone-chilling battlefields.

“We were all really excited when Universal Studios Hollywood approached us about doing a 3D ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ maze based on our music,” said Black Sabbath’s OZZY OSBOURNE. “I’ve seen the drawings of what it will look like when it’s finished and it looks amazing. I can’t wait to walk through it on opening night in September.”

Guests will come face to face with a heart-stopping Lucifer and his bride, blood-soaked dead bodies and bubbling pools of “radioactive water” while song’s inspired by ‘Luke’s Wall’, ‘Iron Man’, ‘Paranoid’, ‘War Pigs’, ‘Electric Funeral’ and – of course – ‘Black Sabbath’ violently penetrate the confines of the maze at high volume.

“Very few bands can claim to have defined a genre of music but Black Sabbaths’ remarkable influence in the evolution of heavy metal will go down in history,” said John Murdy, Creative Director for Universal Studios Hollywood. “Tony Iommi’s dark, iconic riffs, Ozzy Osbourne’s haunting vocals and Geezer Butler’s foreboding lyrics provide the perfect soundtrack for ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ and endless inspiration for our new haunted attraction Black Sabbath 13 3D.”

Halloween Horror Nights 2013 at Universal Studios Hollywood brings together the sickest minds in horror to immerse guests in the living, breathing, three-dimensional world of the most notorious and terrifying creatures and features a slate of unrivaled film production quality mazes, terror-filled Scare Zones and a fully re-imagined Terror Tram experience, uniquely themed to today’s most definitive horror properties. This year’s haunted attractions will include The Walking Dead: No Safe Haven, based on AMC’s Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy Award-winning show, and Evil Dead: Book of the Dead, inspired by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment’s chilling remake of the cult classic.